Call it putting the boots to dengue.
Call it putting the boots to dengue.
More than 30 volunteers, health workers and Hawaii County Civil Defense personnel spent Wednesday morning pounding pavement in Kailua Village, searching for standing water and educating entrepreneurs, residents and visitors about the dengue fever outbreak.
The effort wasn’t intended just to bring the island’s last high-risk area up to speed on ways to “Fight the Bite;” it was to lay the tracks for long-term awareness that tropical mosquito-borne diseases are on the rise and could create more problems in the future.
Boots will be on the ground again today as workers resume spreading the word.
Two days have passed with the dengue case total standing still at 256 since last fall. But the question isn’t when the current outbreak will end, but when it will happen again, said state Department of Health educator Jason Dela Cruz.
“If we fight the bite for dengue, we fight the bite for Zika, chikungunya and West Nile,” he said, manning a table with informational cards and fliers across from the farmers market in Kailua Village.
Michael Dorsey, a visitor from Boulder, Colo., stopped to get information about which West Hawaii parks are closed and why. He and his girlfriend just finished a weeklong camping trip around the island, but didn’t notice many mosquitoes, he said.
“I have had dengue before in Brazil; it’s a big deal,” he said.
The pair planned to travel to the coast of Colombia this year, but called the trip off.
“We travel a lot and we’re not easily scared away, but we decided not to go out of fear of the unknowns around the Zika virus,” he said. “We decided to come here instead, even though we knew ahead of time there was dengue.”
Working in teams of two, members of the Community Emergency Response Team, Hawaii Medical Reserve Corps, Civil Defense and West Hawaii Community Health Center canvassed the village — not because they think the dengue virus is there but as part of a push to raise awareness and address any potential mosquito breeding sites. A DOH Vector Control team was on hand to treat areas of standing water the volunteers identified.
DOH workers have been actively addressing dengue in the “Hamburger Hill” area of Kailua-Kona and in the Kona Highlands area, confirmed Steven Okoji, DOH supervising sanitarian for West Hawaii. Vector Control has sprayed Hamburger Hill, located on Kalani Street, three times in the past two months in response to a dengue cluster, with one of the treatments occurring last week. Kona Highlands also was sprayed last week.
Peter Silva helped canvass the Kona Inn Shopping Village. A few businesses were worried about the mention of dengue in front of customers, but for the most part, “people are really happy we’re doing this,” said Silva, a DOH epidemiological specialist.
“There are still some people who haven’t heard much about it,” he said. “Hitting the ground has been important.”
If the phone at Dela Cruz’s office in Hilo is any indication, dengue awareness is up, and anxiety is down.
“In December, my phone was ringing off the hook,” he said. “It’s been reduced. We still are getting calls.”
Gov. David Ige’s emergency declaration last week was a proactive measure in the face of possible future outbreaks. It will bolster an overtaxed Vector Control staff and help beef up resources that are concentrated on the Big Island, leaving the rest of the state ill-prepared to address mosquito-borne outbreaks should they arise on other islands.
The declaration makes emergency funds available for the DOH should additional spending become necessary, but the department doesn’t have any unmet needs at the moment, said Deputy Health Director Keith Yamamoto. The department already planned to spend $215,000 to hire eight more Vector Control workers, an entomologist for Hawaii Island and a public health communications coordinator.
The department just hired the entomologist, Yamamoto said. The communications coordinator will come on board in March and the job descriptions for the eight Vector Control workers were sent to the governor for approval, with hiring likely to begin next month, he said.
In meetings closed to the press, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard met with Big Island lawmakers Wednesday to discuss the dengue outbreak and steps to prevent the spread of the Zika virus to Hawaii. Today, Gabbard is set to host a round table of experts to address those same topics at the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine on Oahu.
Email Bret Yager at byager@westhawaiitoday.com.